


The Post-Plimpton Puzzle (or What You Want Me to Say)

by Jenni_Snake



Series: What You Want [1]
Category: Big Bang Theory
Genre: Bisexual Character of Color, Bisexual Male Character, Canon Character of Color, Canon Jewish Character, Coming Out, First Kiss, LGBTQ Jewish Character(s), M/M, Pre-Slash, Questioning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-16
Updated: 2012-01-16
Packaged: 2017-10-29 15:16:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,616
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/321285
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jenni_Snake/pseuds/Jenni_Snake
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>*SPOILERS for S03E21* Raj's ruminations after being seduced then dumped by Dr. Plimpton lead him to the relationship he's wanted all along.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Post-Plimpton Puzzle (or What You Want Me to Say)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Crescentium](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crescentium/gifts).



> Spoilers for Season 3 Episode 21, The Plimpton Stimulation
> 
> Thanks to Nuraya for the prompt!

As usual, the cafeteria food was horrible, but that wasn’t what made Raj run his hands over his face. He was trying to figure out if he was actually awake. Hours earlier he had been at breakfast with a beautiful physicist after having spent the night engaged in naughty bedroom role-play with her. Minutes ago she had left with a hunky blond who was presenting at the same conference, leaving Raj alone with his congealing pizza. It had all seemed very sudden, especially the part about getting dumped.

“Did the good doctor just leave you for her next plaything?”

Raj blinked twice - he hadn’t notice Howard sit down across from him. He tried to play cool.

“What are you talking about?”

“The puppy-dog look." Howard noted, pointing a plastic fork in Raj's direction. "Guys like you and Leonard shouldn’t be allowed to sleep with people like Dr. Plimpton.”

“Why the H-E-double-hockey-sticks not?” Raj wished that plastic cutlery had more of an effect when banged against a table.

“Because you end up thinking it means something.”

“I do not! Besides, you probably think you should’ve had the chance.”

“Some of us understand," said Howard, punctuating his words forcefully, like he did his lettuce with his fork, "that sleeping with someone doesn’t mean you have to spend the rest of your life with them.”

Raj sighed, dreamily. “Yeah, but wouldn’t it be nice if it did?”

“No,” Howard said, and stabbed his fork right through the styrofoam plate.

“What do you mean ‘no’?” Raj asked. “Wait a minute... Last night... didn’t you say? ... You broke up with Bernadette! It was the troll sex, wasn’t it?!”

“Would you keep your voice down? They don’t have to know down the hall!”

“Dude, no wonder you’ve been in such a weird mood.”

“No, I haven’t. What mood?”

“Yes, you have - you’ve been sulking around for - for, like, forever. It’s been really annoying. But don’t worry - we’ll think of a way to get her back.”

“No 'we' won’t,” sulked Howard, engrossed in his salad.

“Of course we will! It might be a bit of work, you know, ‘coz it was a bit of a jerk move, and really, come on, dude - a troll? But if we put our minds to it then we’ll think of - ”

“I don’t want her back,” Howard interrupted.

Raj didn't think he could get much more surprised, and thought maybe he was hearing wrong.

“What?” he asked. Howard just shrugged. Raj had just noticed he wasn’t eating - instead, Howard was just pushing slimy pieces of lettuce around on his plate.

“I don’t want to date Bernadette anymore,” he said quietly.

“What? ... You’re not dating the troll, are you?” asked Raj.

“I’m not dating anyone,” Howard said, snapping a tine off his fork. Howard sounded annoyed, but Raj saw an opportunity.

“Oh. Well, in that case I guess you won’t mind if I ask Bernadette out...”

The suggestion make Howard drop his now mostly-useless fork.

“No!” he declared.

"'No'? Dude," Raj said, somewhat peeved, "I'm not asking. What's wrong with you?”

“Nothing’s wrong with me!” Howard said, standing up and tossing his garbage on his uneaten salad. “Jesus, you’re like a vulture, just hanging around for the kill.”

“You said you broke up weeks ago!” Raj countered, stacking some greasy napkins on his pizza. He followed Howard to the garbage and down the hallway.

"Who cares when we broke up?" Howard told him. "You’ve been single for months - "

"Oh that's nice," Raj retorted, "just rub it in."

"I’m not trying to rub it in!" Howard put his head in his hands and pulled his hair.

"If you're not trying to rub it in, then what the hell are you doing? You’re not making any sense."

They found themselves in front of Howard's shared office, and Howard started to fumble through his keys.

"Look," he said, having trouble finding the right key, "can’t we just be single together for a while?"

Raj was dumbstruck.

"See!" he yelled, "that doesn’t make any sense! You’ve been single for weeks and you haven’t even told me, so what do you mean be 'single together?'"

"Why did I have to tell you?!" Howard exclaimed, dropping the keys back into a jumble.

"I don’t get you! What are you talking about? Why didn’t you tell me? What's going on!?"

Raj was having trouble following what they were talking about. All he could tell was that he and Howard were getting progressively angrier with each other and neither of them seemed to know why.

"Can’t I just figure some things out on my own?" Howard blurted out, and immediately fell silent as someone passed them in the hallway. Raj wasn't going to give up so easily.

"Finally, you're making sense! You go right ahead and figure things out on your own. I’ll be dating Bernadette while you do."

Raj knew it was a low blow, especially since he wasn't completely sure he wanted to date Bernadette, but he still felt triumphant. Howard scowled.

"You just don’t get it, do you?" he asked, flustered, finally flipping to the right key.

"Apparently not, Howard." Raj was upset that his victory wasn't more, well, victorious. "What am I supposed to get again?"

With a sigh, Howard seemed to lose whatever fight he had left. He slid the key in the lock.

"Just... Nothing. Forget it. Leave me alone."

And with that, he slipped through the door and let it fall shut behind him.

Raj was caught between surprise and anger, and the latter won out. Fine - if Howard was going to close the door in his face, then he could sulk on his own. Raj turned on his heel, trying not to wish that Howard could see him doing it.

"Be that way," he muttered out loud to no one, and left.

*

Raj spent the rest of the afternoon halfheartedly scribbling notes on sheets of paper, getting bored, and tossing them, balled up, into the recycling bin on the other side of the room. After repeated passive-aggressive sighs from Sheldon, who was neither impressed by Raj’s self-kept basketball score, nor entertained by the projectiles soaring over his head, Raj stopped pretending to ignore him, and gave up on the game. He put his hands behind his head, propped his feet on the massive desk in front of him, and leaned back in his chair.

When, he wondered, had he gotten friends with no sense of humour? Sure, there were the pranks they pulled on each other, but it didn’t balance out against the grandstanding. Raj prodded the desk with the heel of his shoe - case in point. With Sheldon, you couldn’t ever back down, let alone make a joke of something. You had to push until someone ended up with furniture half the size of an asteroid inside an office only slightly bigger than a broom closet. Not to mention Leonard, who was always one glib comment away from a nervous breakdown.

And now Howard, who Raj had always thought he could say or do anything around, was going all snaky over nothing. Raj wanted to tell him he looked really cute when he was doing it, but any joking in that direction would put Howard on the defensive. He sighed and took his phone out of his pocket. He poked around on facebook for a while before writing a note to an old flame from Delhi. It made him feel better and feel homesick all at the same time. Maybe he needed new friends.

When the squeaking of the chair finally got on Sheldon’s last remaining nerve, Raj jumped at his office-mate's suggestion that he go home early. He was out the door before Sheldon even had time to say goodbye, and the fluorescent lights were quickly forgotten in the bright sunshine. As Raj walked out onto the second level of the shaded parkade he saw Howard’s scooter at the end of the row. He checked the time and decided to wait for him.

Perching himself on the edge, he leaned back and looked down, then up, then just leaned on the ledge trying not to think about the precipitous drop. He glanced at Howard’s Vespa, trying to remember even the gist of what they had been arguing about at lunch. He chewed his lip, but couldn’t think of anything, probably because none of it had made any sense to him. Crossing his arms over his chest, he let out a sigh and wished he had friends who just spoke their minds.

Perhaps he was remembering wrong, but it seemed people back home were more open. Well, his other home - this was pretty much home now. But could things have really been that different? Maybe... After all, Haroon and Tanvir were adopting a baby, that was pretty forward thinking. And probably illegal in California. But then, it was probably illegal in India as well. It probably just depended on who you hung out with.

Whatever it was, Raj had found it much easier to be himself where he had grown up. Here, whatever part of Pasadena he had ended up in, the boundaries were well-defined, and there was no crossing back and forth, at least not without a lot of fuss. Well, he didn’t have any proof of that, but... He thought for a moment. Come to think of it, if he came out, Leonard would be a bit awkward, but proclaim that he was 'okay with it,' but still constantly ask if he was being hit on, have to be reassured that he wasn’t, and then have to be further reassured that, yes, he was still attractive. In his own way. Sheldon wouldn’t be bothered much, but would come up with some facts about homosexuality, bisexuality, or Indian culture, as if he were an expert on any of it. To Penny, with complete disregard for any subtleties on the matter, having a ‘gay’ friend would be like earning some sort of West Coast badge of honour, or would at least be a step above having nerd friends. But Howard... Howard worried him the most. He’d probably freak out, clam up, stay away, or be nervous whenever Raj was around him. And that would be before he found out Raj had a crush on him.

Growing up, it had never seemed this hard. When he'd kissed the most beautiful boy on his street in a fit of naïveté, he hadn't been punched in the teeth but given a smile and a shake of the head, and been told to go kiss Dahrmveer - which had begun four years of dating his best friend. Sure, they weren't making out in the street or holding hands in public, but they'd still sit thigh to thigh at the cinema and sneak quick kisses when no one was looking. Now, even if all he wanted to do was date his best friend's cute ex-girlfriend he would probably get disowned. Let alone what would happen if he just went up and kissed Howard. It was much too late for anything like that - he'd spent too much time dithering, and now they were in a comfortable rut of friendship. In any case, despite his complaints, he felt too old to start looking for new friends if things went wrong.

Maybe he was exaggerating - he wouldn’t be disowned if he dated Bernadette. Howard would get over whatever foul mood he was in and start dating another string of girls who would all leave him eventually. Raj didn’t want to just sit by and watch - he would date Bernadette, instead. Besides, Bernadette was beautiful in her own right, too, and, after all, she'd been close to Howard. Raj felt like a jerk for thinking that way, but she did remind him of Howard: all cute and sweet and cuddly. It wasn't that he wouldn't also love to sleep with her for just being her, it was just that he really did hope that sleeping with someone led to a relationship, and when he really thought about, the thought of being with a woman forever seemed strange. Not that he hated the idea of being with a woman (he'd been with plenty, and he did like it), and it wasn’t that the idea of living with a woman for the rest of his life made him cringe or gag, or produced any feeling so intense, it just felt like a bad fit, like a puzzle piece being squeezed into the wrong place.

He wished he could take back what he'd said to Howard earlier about being together forever - he hadn't really meant it about... whassername... He scolded himself for being a massive jerk and sleeping with someone and hoping it was going somewhere and then just forgetting their name - oh right, Elizabeth... But god forbid if he ever let on in front of Howard about his dreams of sleeping with him and hoping that would be the first day of the rest of their lives. He squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head - he sounded like a bloody romance novel, and those were always filled with one-dimensional heroines. Maybe everybody saw him as the damsel in distress. Maybe he was. But... where was he?

Bernadette? He felt sick with himself for thinking it, but as amazing as she was, she would just be a proxy. He'd kept asking Howard what was wrong with him, and now he had to turn that question back on himself. Here he was spending his life as someone else just so he wouldn't lose a friend who he'd lose to some woman eventually anyway, just so he could pine for him from near instead of far. He could barely admit to himself how much he loved Howard - he spent nearly every waking minute with him already - and how heartbroken he would be when he finally had to admit it was never going to happen. Maybe he really was living in a Harlequin novel. He should write this all down - might as well make some money while he was wasting his life.

He heard footsteps, and heard them stop. Howard saw him, but had no choice but to keep walking towards him. Raj hopped down off the ledge.

“Hey,” Howard greeted him with a tone of conciliation.

“Hey,” Raj said, a grin pulling at the corner of his mouth.

“Sorry I was a jerk earlier.”

Raj grinned, and the impulse of friendship made him utter honestly:

“You're not sorry.”

Usually Howard would have ribbed him right back, but not this time.

“Shut up,” he snapped. “Can’t I even apologise to my friend?”

“Not when you’re not sorry,” Raj said, not backing down.

“I’m just trying to apologise, hell! Why are you making this complicated?”

“I don’t know,” mocked Raj, “maybe I love drama. Besides, you’re the one making it complicated.”

“Stop it,” Howard said, stamping his foot, and Raj had to try really hard not to smile because it was so damned cute. “I’m going home.”

Raj stepped between Howard and his scooter and griped him firmly by the arms.

“Look, Howard, what’s wrong?” he asked matter-of-factly.

There was a pause, brief but full, like watching a whirligig spin weightlessly to the ground. Howard’s eyes flitted to Raj’s hands, then back up. Raj felt Howard tense in his grip. Hoarsely, Howard muttered:

“Please don’t touch me.”

There was something in his voice that made him sound like he was hovering on the edge, trying to keep it together, just on the verge of losing it. Raj could feel his own anger rising, wondering why Howard’s words hurt him so much. He sneered and raised his hands in the air.

“No,” Howard winced, “please, touch me. _Please._ ”

Raj felt his jaw drop, and he took a step back like he’d been pushed. There was panic in Howard's eyes.

“Oh God,” he said, “that was weird. I have to go.”

The hairs on the back on Raj’s neck still stood on end, and it was a full minute before he finally noticed that Howard had driven away. For the millionth time that day he wondered what was wrong with people. He also couldn’t be sure that he had just heard what he thought he had heard. If he had, then he now had shattered dreams of a movie-like first kiss, but, then again, life wasn’t a movie.

Somehow he found himself sitting in his own car, starting the engine and backing up. Through his confusion he asked himself if he was okay to drive, and, as he pulled out onto the road, promptly forgot the question. He went through the motions of driving, going nowhere in particular, trying to clear his head, wondering about mixed signals. For all their claims to being open, Californians were massively prudish. Must have had something to do with the Puritans. No _Kama Sutra_ for the U.S.A., thank you very much. Strange to come seven thousand miles just to go back into the closet. Seemed to suit mummy and daddy fine, they had forgotten all about pestering his older siblings to get married first, and he didn’t have the heart (or the fight) to remind them. But, well, it was okay, they had been talking to each other less and less.

The chattering in his head quieted down and his mind was back in the parking lot, feeling Howard’s arms beneath his hands - just now, even though it must have been an hour ago - wanting to hold him like that whenever he wanted. It wasn’t the first time he had thought it, but he knew it was creepy to always be thinking that sort of thing about someone who didn’t want it. Now he didn’t quite know what was going on. He thought maybe he had imagined what had happened, but he kept hearing Howard telling him to touch him, pleading with him, his eyes closed... Raj shook his head. _What the hell?_

He didn’t come back to reality until a horn blared behind him and he had to shrug an apology to the person he had cut off. He glanced at the dashboard clock and realised it was getting late, and he should be heading to Leonard and Sheldon’s place for, well, for whatever night it was; he couldn’t even remember the day of the week. Parking outside the apartment block, he decided he wanted to talk to Howard before they were in front of their friends and it had to be put off. This had to be sorted out ASAP. Looking around, he didn't see Howard's Vespa, so he leaned against the telephone pole and waited.

At 7:30 he got a text from Leonard:

_Where are you guys?_

He replied: _Howard didn’t text you?_

_Not yet thought he was with you._

Raj rolled his eyes and texted Howard. It took nearly a full minute before he got a reply:

_Got sick. Not coming. Ask Penny._

Raj texted: _Nice try._ then to Leonard: _Start without us._

He ignored the whiny texts he got in return from Leonard, and the silence he got from Howard, and got back in his car.

*

When Raj rang the bell at the Wolowitz household, the lack of screaming over who would open the door let him know that Howard’s mother, at least, wasn’t home. He took out his key and stared at it for a moment - _Who has a key to their best friend’s house? And carries it around all the time? On their own key chain?_ \- before letting himself in. After a quick look around, he heard a slow, creaking sound coming from outside the kitchen window.

He found Howard on the porch swing in the backyard sitting like a child in trouble: staring straight ahead, hunched over, hands clasped between his knees, toes just barely touching the ground. He glanced up at Raj, then looked away again. After a moment, Raj sat down beside him. He reached out and took one of Howard’s hands, squeezing it in his own. Raj offered a smile as Howard searched his face, then sighed. Howard’s hand went slack. Only after a moment did he speak.

“I know what you’re going to say,” he said, looking up to the sky, pausing as if to stem an inevitable disappointment. “You’re going to say: ‘forget it, it doesn’t matter what happened, we’re friends, we’ll get over it.’”

Raj felt his own heart racing, stung by a bit of sadness. Unconsciously, he rubbed his thumb over the back of Howard’s hand.

“Is that what you want me to say?” he ventured.

Howard looked at his hand, then searched Raj’s face again.

“What if,” Raj said, “what if I said... What if I just...”

With his other hand, he cupped Howard’s cheek, a little giddy as he stroked the stubble that always started to poke through at this time of day. Howard pressed lightly into his hand and Raj felt a tingle excite his spine. He leaned in for a kiss, and Howard closed his eyes. Raj licked his lips just before they met Howard’s, melting. The warmth disappeared for a moment as Howard pulled back slightly.

“Why now?” he whispered the question.

“Talk later,” said Raj, shushing him, and leaned in to kiss him again.

For all the time he’d spent imagining the moment, nothing compared to its intense simplicity, the pure feeling and joy and not wanting it to end and... Howard broke the kiss again.

“Shouldn’t we tell -”

“Later,” Raj interrupted, and grasped Howard again by the lips. He could feel Howard smiling as he kissed him, and couldn't help smiling himself.

They disappeared into each other's embrace under the stars in a moonless sky.


End file.
